Apple has a page devoted to their iPhone Developer Program, but you still need to sign up before they will tell you any details. Some are complaining about the restrictions Apple has put on native programs written for the iPhone but they don’t sound that limiting to me. I imagine that the more severe ones, such as restrictions on private API’s and open source software, will be eased over time.

I had read before that Apple intended to ban emulators on the iPhone, but I can’t find any official confirmation of that. Apparently there’s no blanket ban, at least according to this: StyleTap officially bringing Palm emulator to the iPhone / iPod touch.

Of course, programming for the iPhone using Xcode isn’t really that different than using the Windows CE, Pocket PC, or Smartphone support built-in to Visual Studio. I’m sure that anyone who has ever used Visual Studio has created at least one “Hello world” program for the emulated smartphone. But has the Pocket PC ever excited as many people as the iPhone?

At this point, my interest in iPhone development remains just curiosity. A few problems remain:

• I don’t own a Macintosh (necessary to run Xcode and the iPhone emulator)
• I don’t own an iPhone (necessary to test programs)
• If I did own an iPhone, I would have travel around 100 miles to use it (according to the coverage maps)

The first two problems could be remedied without too much trouble, but the third would be a bit more difficult.

There seem to be two caveats:

• The SDK and tools run only on the Mac.
• You can test your programs on the emulator for free, but you need an Apple Developer program membership (which costs $99) if you want to run them on a real iPhone or sell them at the Apple iPhone Marketplace.

Both seem to be pretty reasonable restrictions. It sounds as if it is pretty easy to experiment with iPhone development, which I’m sure is exactly what Apple wants.